Payal Kapadia’s film to compete at Cannes Festival

Writer-director Payal Kapadia’s first fiction feature, All We Imagine As Light, will compete for top honors at the upcoming Cannes Film Festival. The festival will take place from May 14 to 25. Cannes has selected an Indian film for its main competition after 30 years. The last film that made it to the festival was Shaji N Karun’s Swaham in 1994.

Festival president Iris Knobloch and general delegate Thierry Fremaux announced it at a press conference on Thursday in Paris. This year will witness the 77th Cannes Film Festival.

The Indo-French movie follows a nurse named Prabha, who receives an unexpected gift from her estranged husband that leaves her unsettled. While her younger roommate is seeking a quiet space to be with her lover, eventually, they embark on a trip to a coastal town, where they find space for their dreams.

However, Payal Kapadiya is not new to the Cannes festival. In 2021, her ‘A Night of Not Knowing Nothing’ won the Golden Eye Award for Best Documentary Playing in the Director’s Fortnight, an important Cannes sidebar.

In 2017, Payal’s ‘Afternoon Clouds’ was a part of the Cinefondation section, which also took place in the festival with the Critics’ Week and Director’s Fortnight. 

A British-Indian filmmaker, Sandhya Suri’s film ‘Santosh’ has also been selected for Un Certain Regard. A few movies have competed in the Cannes Film Festival, including Chetan Anand’s Neecha Nagar (1946), V Shantaram’s Amar Bhoopali (1952), Raj Kapoor’s Awaara (1953), Satyajit Ray’s Parash Pathar (1958), MS Sathyu’s Garm Hava (1974), and Mrinal Sen’s Kharij (1983). ‘Neecha Nagar’ remains the only Indian film to have won a Palme d’Or.

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